First of all, three points to serve as background:
From the day after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the policies followed by the U.S. Treasury and the U.S. Federal Reserve and the U.S. administrations have been very helpful. They have been good ones. The alternative--standing back and watching the markets deal [...]
D.H. Lawrence to Blanche Jennings, October 9, 1908:
The Letters of D. H. Lawrence: ...Pray do not trouble me about that paper on Art; I did not want it, I wanted your acknowledgement. I'm glad you like iut--I had much rather you found it to your taste than that' [...]
And "Chip" chimes in with a defense of Alan Sloan, and a demonstration of yet more... "quote mining" by AEI senior fellows James Glassman and Kevin Hassett:
When Allan Meltzer Ceased Being a Real Economist...: Chip said...
Here is the full quote from Alan Sloan [www.tcsdaily.com]:
[...]Buce's book lists:
Basic Finance Background Reading
Robert C. Pozen, Too Big to Save? How to Fix the U.S. Financial System
[...]In comments, John rescues the honor of Princeton's Burton Malkiel by pointing out where Kevin Hassett and James Glassman's claim that Malkiel had called their book "a well-written treatise that cannot be dismissed..." actually came from:
When Allan Meltzer Ceased Being a Real Economist...: John said...
Thanks [...]
Every time I look at this chart, I shake my head in wonder:
In what possible futures are U.S. nominal and real Treasury bonds worth so much to make their current prices so high?
Those of us who liked Allan Meltzer's history of the Federal Reserve were shocked when he showed up this summer as a Republican hack, writing:
[gopleader.gov]: There is no greater recognition of the failure of the stimulus program to create jobs than the efforts to mislead the public into [...]
Paul Krugman is judicious and sober:
Rashomon in the desert: Dubai or not Dubai — that is the question. Dubai’s sorta-kinda default (a state-owned enterprise seeking a rescheduling of its debts) is, by itself, not that big of a deal. But who else looks like Dubai? [...]
This should have opened by now--if they ever found anybody who was happy to have their collateral start underwater:
Hydropolis, The Underwater Hotel in Dubai Due To Be Completed Soon: The financial crisis is not over yet, but those guys from Dubai never knew what’s up with this crisis. [...]
Buce writes:
Underbelly: Short Memories: Republicans and Civil Rights: Short Memories: Republicans and Civil Rights There's a curious case of memory loss that seems to be afflicting both left and right this morning over the history of civil rights legislation. Link, (link). Start with Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx of [...]
Interesting time. In Europe, the Creditanstalt's bankruptcy and what followed was what turned the recession into the European Great Depression...
Roula Khalaf: The emirate has a lot of explaining to do: It came in a short statement about the restructuring of Dubai World, one of the emirate’s biggest and [...]
<p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via web</a> from <a href="http://delong.posterous.com/note-this-is-what-is-left-after-making-sweet">delong's posterous</a> </p>
[...] Thanksgiving I:
Making Light: Thanksgiving: By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.
To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we [...]
I may be teaching this semester's large undergraduate course--Twentieth Century Economic History--online next summer for Berkeley's International Studies program.
What components do people think are essential in trying to do education online? What components do people think are helpful? What components do people think are wasteful?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics Reports:
ETA Press Release: Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report: In the week ending Nov. 21, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 466,000, a decrease of 35,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 501,000. The 4-week moving average was 496,500, a [...]
And the thing should be shut down immediately. Just saying.
Howard Gleckman on George "It's My Business to Lie as Much as Possible" Will:
“Democrats health bills depend on forcing [...]
Alex Tabarrok writes:
Marginal Revolution: Sweet Trade: Here is a fun, easy and effective experiment that instructors can use to illustrate the gains from trade. The instructor puts chocolate bars ("fun-size") or other candy in bags, one bag for each student. (Alternatively, you can use the type of small [...]
Hoisted from the Archives:
Mark-My-Beliefs-to-Market Time: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal: I am reading Michael Mussa's brand-new very short book on the latest Argentinian financial crisis [Michael Mussa (2002), Argentina and the Fund: From Triumph to Tragedy (Washington: Institute for International Economics: 088132339X)]. In The Importance of Being Earnest, [...]
Matthew Yglesias writes:
Matthew Yglesias: Blanche Lincoln, Racing Horse: Blanche Lincoln has emerged as one of the pivotal votes in the US Senate debate about health care reform. So an article about her and her role in the debate seems like a smart thing for a newspaper to run. [...]
But bad news for the American press. Ezra Klein and Stan Collender pile on to David Broder. Each day the Washington Post publishes David Broder is another day of humiliation for serious journalists working for the Post, for Newsweek, etc.--and also a day of humiliation for all those working for [...]
Only those who make their nut one way or the other by pleasing Republicans claim that it isn't. Jackie Calmes and Michael Cooper are on the case:
Jackie Calmes and Michael Cooper: Now that unemployment has topped 10 percent, some liberal-leaning economists see confirmation of their warnings that the' [...]
Dean Baker:
In Just a Decade the U.S. Interest Burden Could Be as High as It Was in 1992!!!!!!!:
That might not sound scary to most people, but this was the punch line of a front page NYT news story.... The fourth paragraph asserts that:
[...]In the British Deborah Lipstadt-David Irving trial between the historian and the holocaust denier, an Irving victory would have meant, in Britain:
that Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin, would have had to pay substantial damages to Irving. that the copies of Lipstadt's book in Britain would have been pulped and the sale [...]Back on March 3, 2000 I marked my beliefs to market: took a look back at the ten most important things I had believed in the 1990s, and tried to assess how accurate my beliefs had been.
Now March 3, 2010 is coming up. What are the ten most important [...]
When you praise Idi Amin, you've gone beneath the bottom of the barrel and out into the earth...
Xeni Jardin::
Hugo Chavez, cannibalism apologist: Is Bruce Vilanch writing for Hugo Chavez now? 'Cause the Venezuelan leader's comedy material is pretty good lately: now he's a cannibalism apologist. In a recent [...]
Tim Duy thinks that the Federal Reserve has backed itself into a corner. He is right that the Fed because it was independent was in a "better position to raise regulatory and supervisory roadblocks during the debt build-up compared to other, more politically susceptible agencies." But at the time the [...]
It's buried in the health care bill. We think it has teeth--and the Congressional Budget Office agrees:
Ezra Klein - Health-care reform's grand bargain: This is how health-care reform controls costs. It is, at its base, a grand bargain: The coverage expansion gets liberals to agree to, and even [...]
Free Exchange muses on central bank independence.
I haven't done a nose count on the FOMC. But it is pretty clear that right now it has too many inflation hawks on it and not enough unemployment hawks. The only saving grace is that other central banks are worse--some much worse.
In the' [...]
Steve Benen:
The Washington Monthly: Republican critics of the economic recovery efforts, when they're not taking credit for the money that's benefiting their state/district, take it as a given that the stimulus "failed." For the right, it's a foregone conclusion, hardly worth discussing anymore. The New York Times reminds' [...]
He watches the U.S. press corps cover Obama's trip to Asia, and judges it:
Manufactured failure #2: the press, Obama, Asia: I wasn't in touch with Howard French or Tish Durkin (to say nothing of Amb. Jon Huntsman) before we all expressed the same amazed and negative reaction at' [...]
Microsoft runs a Windows Mobile event:
Windows Phone Thoughts: Mobius 2009: Fascinating, But Little That Can Be Shared:
Not quite you expect to see at Redmond, is it?
[...]Peter Orszag writes:
STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICY: H.R. 3961 — Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act of 2009 (Rep. Dingell, D-Michigan, and 6 cosponsors):
The Administration strongly supports House passage of H.R. 3961, the Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act of 2009, and appreciates congressional efforts to ensure that Medicare beneficiaries [...]
So says John Judis. He does, however, tell one thing that I think is a lie: that the New York Times and the Washington Post "have their strengths in foreign news." In my opinion, the two of them together don't have "strengths." Rather, they collectively have one strength: Anthony Shadeed.' [...]
Three points to serve as background:
First of all, from the day after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the policies followed by the U.S. Treasury and the U.S. Federal Reserve and the U.S. administrations have been very helpful. They have been good ones. The alternative--standing back and watching the markets deal [...]
Paul Krugman reads the tea leaves in what looks like the best piece of economic analysis I have read this month. When we do the things we do well, this is the kind of thing we do:
Interest rates: the phantom menace: From various bat squeaks I’ve put together [...]
Annual change in the U.S. federal debt-to-GDP ratio, and presidential term averages:
Source: CBO Current-Law BaselineFord had bad luck--his presidency coincided with a down phase of the business cycle. But other than Ford, the contrast between the Democrats and the old-style Republicans (Eisenhower and Nixon) on the one [...]
Spencer Ackerman asks a question:
Oh, So That’s the Fifth Category of Detentions: As Marc [Ambinder] writes, that sounds a lot like the administration will just simply hold them in legal limbo, as per the so-called “Fifth Category” of detentions outlined by President Obama in his May speech at [...]
Who writes:
Out of running room: I THINK Brad DeLong misread this post of mine from yesterday as a shot at him. It wasn't. I agree with him that the constraints which seem to be draping themselves across American policy options are worrisome. I was more focused on those' [...]
With respect to its: "That's the nature of many of these interventions—we all live to whine another day..."...
For the record, I wrote my piece not to "get a lot of links" but because I was trying to think through what the U.S. government could do over the next two years [...]
Mark Thoma is alarmed by our president:
Economist's View: Obama's Wrong-Headed Thinking on the Deficit: Edward Harrison catches this quote from Obama....
Obama warned the United States' climbing national debt could drag the country into a "double-dip recession," though he said he's still considering additional tax incentives [...]
Justin Elliot of TPM on the Republican Party's Official Newspaper:
Wash Times Editor: I Was Forced To Attend A Moon Church Mass Wedding: Washington Times editorial page editor Richard Miniter is filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the paper today, alleging discrimination based on age, [...]
It's not Boltzmann's Brain:
It's Boltzmann's Bang:
Sean Carroll
Edge: WHY DOES THE UNVIERSE LOOK THE WAY IT DOES: A Conversation With Sean Carroll: I read papers by Huw Price, who is a philosopher in Australia... who... said that cosmologists are completely fooling [...]
Shut 'em both down now. Please. The stupid--it BURNS!!!!
Duncan Black:
Eschaton: Slutty Schoolgirl? Really? I thought the Newsweek cover was obviously a poor choice even if right wingers were getting a bit overwrought in their criticisms. But they also include a slutty Palin schoolgirl doll? What the fuck? Of' [...]
Ezekiel is doing the Lord's work on health care reform at OMB. His judgment is good. He is worth supporting--joggling his elbow is really not helpful given that he has the point on these sets of issues.
But I feel anxious--I don't think I can quite sign on with a' [...]
For 2 1/4 years now I have been saying that there is no chance of a repeat of the Great Depression or anything like it--that we know what to do and how to do it and will do it if things turn south.
I don't think I can say that anymore.' [...]
INTRODUCTION TO ECONOMIC HISTORY FOR FIRST-YEAR ECONOMICS GRADUATE STUDENTS
Class Topics:Jan 20: Modes of Production
Jan 27: Malthus and the Demographic Transition
Feb 3: Industrious Revolutions
Feb 10: Trade, Law, and State
Feb 17: Industrial Revolutions
Feb 24: Globalizations
Mar 3: Differentiated and Uneven Development
Mar 10: Business Cycles
Mar 17: WWI and the Great Depression
Mar 31: WWII and [...]
In my email inbox, from "A Leftist":
I asked Xcdv Umesnagos about the power outages [in Venezuela] reported by Simon Romero of the NY TIMES. His reply:
Romero is a fool but the NYT is more so for keeping on a guy who just rewrites the articles in [...]
Ezra Klein talks to Jon Gruber:
Does health-care reform do enough on cost control?: My view is, even if the bill did no cost control it would be an incredible thing for this country. But politically, it sets the stage for cost control in two senses. First, it puts [...]
[grgahero.org] is 49 Luo grandmothers and great-grandmothers raising 150 AIDS-orphaned grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Ahero, Kenya. They sell their baskets to buy animals, schoolbooks, and extra food through this one-woman zero-overhead NGO.
<p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via web</a> from <a href="http://delong.posterous.com/grandmothers-raising-grandchildren">delong's posterous</a> </p>Today, November' [...]
He writes:
Making Light: Rouge Queen: It was the typo that had to happen. And happen it did, at CNN, just now today...
[...]November 13, 1939:
On Friday, November 13, my relations with Mr. Chamberlain had so far ripened that he and Mrs. Chamberlain came to dine with us at Admiralty House, where we had a comfortable fiat in the attics. We were a party of four. Although we had been colleagues under Mr. [...]
I just don't understand why people think John McCain is in any sense a patriot. I just don't.
Ta-Nehisi Coates:
A Really Small Human Being - Ta-Nehisi Coates: Sarah Palin on why she's still in 10th grade, or rather gave Katie Couric an interview:
The A.P. says that [...]
Even though they are not yet talking sensibly--like about the need for sticking to PAYGO over the medium run.
Economist Mom:
Peter Orszag on the Tough Specifics of Deficit Reduction: The President’s budget director, Peter Orszag, was on NPR’s Morning Edition on Wednesday morning. He talked about the really difficult [...]
Brother Joseph Gagnon makes a few points:
The Liquidity Trap Does Not Make Monetary Policy Ineffective: With short-term risk-free interest rates essentially at zero in the major developed economies, conventional monetary policy is in a liquidity trap. As a number of commentators have observed, printing zero-interest-rate money to buy [...]
Michael Fletcher and Neil Irwin are an embarrassment to the Washington Post.
Think of that.
Let's turn the mike over to Tim Fernholz:
TAPPED Archive | The American Prospect: President Obama has announced his intention to hold a Jobs Summit at the White House, reacting to the high unemployment rate and [...]
Heebee-Geebie reports:
Unfogged: I don't know when exactly it started, but NPR now uses the word "torture" without qualifications to describe the activities at Guantanamo. That is critically important in shaping the narrative we tell, as a society, about our actions post-9/11.
' [...]
In the short term, we don't have a deficit problem: as long as unemployment remains highly elevated--certainly as long as the unemployment rate stays above 7%--and as long as interest rates on U.S. Treasuries stay low a bigger federal deficit is a feature not a bug: our' [...]
From the Department of Labor: weekly new unemployment insurance claims are not rising as rapidly as the seasonal adjustment factor predicts that they should be rising if usual seasonal patterns hold:
ETA Press Release: Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report: In the week ending Nov. 7, the advance figure for [...]
Peter Boockvar:
30 year bond auction was light: The record $16b 30 year bond auction was light as the yield was a few bps above where the when issued was trading and the bid to cover at 2.26 was the weakest since May and below the ‘09 average of [...]
Yet another journamalistic enterprise that we would all be better off without, and that in a just world would dry up and blow away immediately. Menzie Chinn has the mike:
Econbrowser: Politico Does Economic Analysis...: Be afraid; be very afraid.
From "'Created or saved' doesn't add up", by' [...]
As I said, I have collected $500 this semester in Amazon referral fees for books assigned in this course, and it seems appropriate to give this back.
Therefore Tuesday December 1 at 2 PM, after lecture, we are going to have an Econ 115 reception outside the classroom--either in the Bank [...]
I really do not want to give up November 19 as a lecture day--and bitter experience has taught me that an afternoon lecture on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the 24th, simply does not work.
Therefore: the midterm scheduled for November 19 is cancelled.
In its place is substituted:
Due Friday December 11, [...]
David Wessel reports:
The Federal Deficit Mess in a Single Sentence: Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, gave a speech the other day at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. In it, he nicely summarized the federal government’s long-term fiscal problem in one sentence:
[...]Paul Krugman taunts the innumerate right some more:
Reagan mythbusting, productivity edition: Just to be clear: when I show that growth by every measure has been slower since 1980 than before, I’m not claiming that this shows that Reagan/finance caused the slowdown. The upper hand, in this case, is [...]
PEIS--Notes on Reform...: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal: Consider PEIS 101, Modern Theories of Political Economy. As I see it, the course has three objectives:
To teach students that the classical theoretical traditions in social theory or political economy--chiefly those of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de [...]He writes:
Felix Salmon: Sky News is using YouTube to host their entire “News Corp will block Google” interview with Murdoch...
I keep on thinking that there is something powerful and important to be written about Google's success and the elective affinity between non-rival commodities and advertising. In order to [...]
Aha! Juan Non-Volokh accuses me of Climate Change McCarthyism. I am one of those who:
selectively edit their comment threads...
The first reaction to Juan came 32 minutes later by "bailey":
Wow. We’re really defining McCarthyism down these days, aren’t we?
Indeed we are.
I should admit defeat and slink away. There [...]
Well, this is new. My first ever DMCA takedown notice--from HarperCollins, publisher of Levitt and Dubner's Superfreakonomics. While other publishers these days are happy to have sample chapters of their authors' works read and distributed on the internet, not so with HarperCollins.
One thing I can do in response is--tit-for-tat--to remove' [...]
From my perspective, deciding whether to tighten or ease is easy. It involves asking and answering a few questions:
Q: What is the current forecast for unemployment? A: It is that unemployment will stay around 10% for a year or more, and then slowly decline.
Q: Is that the path that we [...]
The phrase "political economy" has at least four meanings:
the heir of Enlightenment moral philosophy, in the same sense that today's proper sciences are the heirs of Enlightenment natural philosophy. the rubble left of the Marxist, Marxisant, and Marxizoid project of social analysis and utopian transformation after history bombed [...]Probably it's just that I have been reading too much about Mussolini's Italy.
But reading Paul Krugman this morning on the Republican Party's "sorcerer's apprentice" act made me think that we are a lot closer to Weimar America than I ever thought I would be...
At this point there are only two [...]
Audio: Reed Public Policy Lecture (11.07.2009 03-14-36 PM)
Download now or preview on posterous Reed College Public Policy.doc (3307 KB)Download pdf: 20091107 reed slides.pdf
Posted via email from [braddelong.posterous.com] at Brad DeLong's Scrapbook
[...]Hoisted from Comments: "a" writes:
Another Bad Employment Report - J. Bradford DeLong's Grasping Reality with All Eight Tentacles: "If we find ourselves in a financial-meltdown world where unemployment or inflation kisses 10%--then I will unhappily concede, and say that Greenspanism was a mistake." - BDL, 16 July 2008
[...]
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports:
The unemployment rate rose from 9.8 to 10.2 percent in October, and nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline (-190,000).... Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has risen by 8.2 million, and [...]
